Showing posts with label Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Museum. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 March 2017
Historic Paddle Illustration National Maritime Museum Mikmaq paddle
The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London has an historic illustration in its collection that might be relevant to those with an interest in traditional paddle designs.
Dated to 1750, it is thought to be the earliest accurate representation of a Mi'kmaq birchbark canoe. Included in the scale drawing is a pole gripped paddle with recurved shoulders and a pointed tip.
Object ID ZAZ7337
Description Scale 1:19.2.
A plan showing the body plan, sheer lines, and longitudinal plan for an 18ft bark canoe brought back to England for Lord Anson by Captain Henry Barnsley of HMS America (1749), in November 1750. The plan includes the outline of one of the paddles.
Date made 1750
Credit National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Additional information on the backstory of this remarkable illustration is provided by an excerpt from Adney & Chappelle.
"The early English settlers of New England and New York were acquainted with the canoe forms of eastern Indians such as the Micmac, Malecite, Abnaki, and the Iroquois. Surviving records, however, show no detailed description of these canoes by an English writer and no illustration until about 1750. At this time a bark canoe, apparently Micmac, was brought from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to England and delivered to Lord Anson who had it placed in the Boat House of the Chatham Dockyard. There it was measured and a scale drawing was made by Admiralty draftsmen; the drawing is now in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts, in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. A redrawing of this plan appears opposite. It probably represents a war canoe, since a narrow, sharp-ended canoe is shown. The bottom, neither flat nor fully round, is a rounded V-shape; this may indicate a canoe intended for coastal waters. Other drawings, of a later date, showing crude plans of canoes, exist in Europe but none yet found appear as carefully drawn as the Admiralty plan, a scale drawing, which seems to be both the earliest and the most accurate 18th-century representation of a tribal type of American Indian bark canoe."
- Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, p12
Adney documented that Mi'kmaq and other Wabanaki canoes were well known for their elaborate ornamentation of winter bark. Shame that that the original Admiralty draftsmen didn't document if any such decoration existed on the canoe or the paddle, but that's not surprising since their obvious purpose would've been documented the lines of the hull.
For anyone interested in recreating this unique paddle shape, offsets for this paddle design can be found in Graham Warren's 100 Canoe Paddle Designs book.
Wednesday, 22 March 2017
Innu Paddles Virtual Museum of Canada
The Virtual Museum exhibit, Tipatshimuna - Innu Stories from the Land features a variety of Innu artifacts in various museum collections. While scrolling through the collection gallery, I came across two model paddles in the collection of The Rooms Archive, Art Gallery and Museum in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Here's the description of the first paddle:
Wooden carving of a single bladed paddle. Blade has both faces ridged, sides slanted. Arm of paddle (approximately 10.0 cm long) widens at end. Blade decorated with three sets of red parallel lines. Tip also painted red.
Catalogue number: III-B-148
Culture: Barren Ground Innu
Institution: The Rooms, Provincial Museum Division
Place made: unknown
Maker: unknown
Collector: unknown
Date Collected: unknown
A second similar model paddle is also in their collection.
Wooden carving of a single bladed paddle. Blade has both faces ridged. Sides are slanted and the tip is rounded. Arm of paddle tapered, widening a little at the end, edge rounded. Blade decorated with two blue bands approximately 3 apart), one band bordered by red triangular pattern.
Catalogue number: III-B-149
Culture: Barren Ground Innu
Institution: The Rooms, Provincial Museum Division
Place made: unknown
Maker: unknown
Collector: unknown
Date Collected: unknown
Similarly shaped and decorated paddles have been documented before. The Material culture of the Davis Inlet and Barren Ground Naskapi outlines enthographic items collected by William Duncan Strong from the Davis Inlet and Barren Ground Naskapi (Innu) in 1927-1928. Plate 49 (pg 89) features a diagram of 4 decorated such Innu paddles.
Naskapi Paddles in the Strong Collection
Source Link
Sunday, 19 March 2017
Historic Paddle Photo Admiral Digby Museum Collection
A photograph in the graphic collections of the Admiral Digby Museum in Nova Scotia features a paddler about to embark in his canoe. The closed gunnel canvas canoe is a real beauty. Likewise, the paddle has pretty shape with a simple flattened grip.
Title: Man standing by boat looking at it.
Admiral Digby Museum
Accession number: 1980.25.59
NovaMuse Source Link
As per their Educational Usage Policy
Thursday, 16 March 2017
Canoe Museum Paddle Replicas
Not so long ago, I wrote a post about William Armstrong's painting of a Hudson's Bay Store scene. It depicted a painted paddle with yellow and red checkered pattern.
William Armstrong
Hudson's Bay Store, Fort William c. 1860-1870
National Gallery of Canada (no. 30490)
Paddle Closeup
While strolling through the "Historic Fur Trade" section on a recent visit to the Canadian Canoe Museum, I came across a display with a reproduction of this very same paddle. Normally, I probably would've passed it by without much attention, but now understand a bit more of its significance.
Canadian Canoe Museum Replica
Also frequent throughout the museum are replicas portrayed in the many paintings of Frances Anne Hopkins, especially those portrayed in her classic painting, Voyageurs at Dawn.
Voyageurs at Dawn, 1871
Archives Canada Citation
Decorated paddles laying on the ground
centre of painting)
More paddles leaning against a rock face
(far right of painting)
These bright scarlett paddles were decorated with various hash marks and chevron patterns. Here are some next to the museum's huge Montreal Canoe display
Voyageur Paddle Replicas
As a side note, the museum just released the 2010 dates for their Paddle Carving Workshop - the place where I first learned this fun hobby.
Saturday, 11 March 2017
Models in the Madrid Naval Museum Part II
Here's a look at Chinese ship and boat models in the Museo Naval de Madrid. As in the previous post, about Philippine vessels in the same museum, the captions are my none-too-adept translations of the Spanish exhibit cards, followed by my own comments in parentheses. Click any image to enlarge.
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Champantain(19th C.), Chinesecoast guard vessel, generally used to pursue opium smugglers (I've never come across this name for a vessel type. I wonder if there's a different term in English.) |
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| (another shot of the champantain in the previous photo. She looks speedy, as a contraband patrol boat should.) |
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Junk Keying(19th C.), Two models of junks similar to the Keying, the first Chinese vessel to sail from Hong Kong to London (The trip was via Cape of Good Hope and USA, in 1846-48. See the Wikipedia article for more.) |
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| (the stern of the junk on the right of the previous photo) |
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Chinesefunerary offering (17th C.) (Just as Chinese grave goods often depicted the happy home and residents of deceased lands-people, so too did boat dwellers depict their homes in goods buried with loved ones) |
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Sampantanka(19th C.), River vessel for passenger carriage and selling merchandise (i.e., a sampan. The model wasn't specifically identified as Chinese, but I'm pretty confident that it is) |
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| Lorcha (19th C.), Chinese; used for cabotage and piracy. (Cabotage is coastal cargo carriage. This one is definitely a pirate. If you click to enlarge, you'll see cannon in the bow and stern, and the rowers are protected by round shields, as in the old, inaccurate illustrations of Viking ships.) |
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"House of Flowers" (18th C.), Chinesepleasure vessel (model appears to be made of ivory. The detail carving is lovely and intricate.) |
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| (closeup of the vessel "House of Flowers," in previous photo) |
Tuesday, 7 March 2017
Canadian Canoe Museum News
According to an article in the Peterborough Examiner, Jeremy Ward, the new curator of the Canadian Canoe Museum, in Peterborough, ON, is taking steps to involve the museum more closely with the local community.
The article tells of a project that Ward managed for the museum, the "construction of a 36-inch birchbark canoe in 2004." On first reading this, I thought that the reporter or editor had misread the foot (') mark and interpreted it as inches (") -- shades of the funniest scene in the movie "This is Spinal Tap!" But on further reading, it turned out to be accurate -- there is a current exhibit of miniature canoes that Ward managed.
I've never had a chance to visit, but the CCM is at the top of my list of places to go -- up there with India and northern Scotland. They don't have a terribly impressive website, but the scope of their collection of canoes from around the world is renowned. Maybe in gratitude for this tremendously valuable exposure, Mr. Ward will sponsor an all-expenses-paid trip for me and my family. You suppose?
Tuesday, 28 February 2017
Birchbark Canoe at Abbe Museum
The Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, is dedicated to showing the history and culture of Maine's Native Americans. Set right in the center of town (which is a zoo on a summer weekend), it's new, slick, somewhat on the small side, somewhat political in nature, and it has a few canoe-related artifacts. This post will focus on the museum's only full-size birchbark canoe. The next one will look at its collection of models and other canoe depictions. (As always, click any image to enlarge.)
I'll introduce the canoe by quoting the exhibit signage:
Canoe: Atikamekw (probably Manawan First Nation), Late 1800sRoughly similar, perhaps. There are many notable differences between this Algonquin canoe and the Wabanaki canoes of Maine, but I guess the museum couldn't get its hands on an authentic and historical Maine Indian canoe, so this one had to do.
This canoe was built at St. Alexis des Monts, Province of Quebec, in the late 1800s. Algonkian in design and construction, it is similar to canoes that were used by the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indians of Maine.
The signage goes on to list materials: Sheathing, ribs, gunwales, "bulkheads" (i.e., headboards), bow and stern posts (i.e., stem and stern posts): all cedar, type not specified. Lashings: Split spruce root. Seam sealer: spruce or pine pitch, ground charcoal, tallow. Cover: single sheet of birch bark
Stem protectors are leather. Note the rather sharp turn of the stem or sternpost from horizontal to past vertical. (Is this the characteristic that Chapelle called "chin"?) This is quite a different profile than the Penobscot bark canoe built by Steve Cayard last year at Penobscot Marine Museum. (By the way, Steve just finished another bark canoe yesterday at Penobscot Marine Museum.)
The headboards are unusual in having a strong convex curve inboard. Most curved headboards curve the other direction. This one is the bow, I believe.
Stern headboard. I like the rounded top, maybe symbolizing a man's head.
Note how the sternpost rises above the gunwales. Also note the wulegessis, the decorative flap/deck of bark that is sandwiched between the gunwales and the hull.
Only the thwarts were lashed. The gunwales and their connection with the bark covering were assembled with nails.
The bow, I believe.
Top view of the wulegessis, showing treatment of the gunwales, caps, and headboard lashing arrangement.
Quarter-thwart, deeply curved with the concave face facing the end of the canoe.
Interior, showing two paddles made by Joe Mell, Passamaquoddy, in 1904.
One of the paddles has a conventional Penobscot-style grip.
The other paddle has an unusual, attractive ovoid bulge with a sharp line, rather than a smooth transition, where it meets the flat base of the grip.
Exhibit signage: an image from Scribners Monthly, 1880, showing how Mt. Desert Island's Native Americans used bark canoes to hunt porpoises with spears...
...and with guns. This would take some pretty steady shooting and a lot of trust in your stern paddler.
Both of the Scribners images also appear in the new book Indians in Eden, about the Native Americans of Mt. Desert Island. (Eden was Bar Harbor's original name.) The book has significant content about their use of birchbark canoes for both traditional economic activities, and for employment in MDI's early tourist economy.
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